Glenn Kolomeitz, the Gerroa man and former NSW RSL boss responsible for lifting the lid on the league’s financial scandals, says a public inquiry into its books has revealed a larger amount of questionable spending than first thought.
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Mr Kolomeitz, who ordered a forensic audit into the charity’s spending a year ago, has been overseas at a fraud conference in recent weeks and hasn’t yet been called to give evidence before the inquiry.
The probe – being overseen by former Supreme Court Judge, Patricia Bergin, SC – this week heard former RSL president Don Rowe claimed sumptuous meals, an inner-city apartment used by his son for seven years, Christmas shopping and “income support” offsetting his mortgage as work expenses.
Mr Rowe was the president for more than a decade before he resigned in 2014.
“Don Rowe’s in the frame very much, but there are others who have had their snouts in the trough and I think the inquiry has not given as much attention to that as perhaps it could have,” Mr Kolomeitz told the Mercury.
“I’d like to see these travel rorts, like these seven trips to Hellfire Pass and all this other nonsense, which I sort of opened up but it hasn’t really been explored in any great detail in the inquiry yet.”
Don Rowe’s in the frame ... but there are others who have had their snouts in the trough.
- Former NSW RSL boss Glenn Kolomeitz
Mr Kolomeitz said he was also concerned about “the attempts or the lengths that some members of the state council went to conceal the fraudulent behaviour of Don Rowe”.
“That hasn’t been ventilated in the inquiry to date, so we’ll see where that goes,” he said.
Overall, Mr Kolomeitz said the inquiry was exploring similar issues to those exposed as part of his wide-ranging investigation.
“A lot of that stuff is exactly what I was seeing and it was definitely what prompted me to demand the forensic audit,” he said.
“The use of the cards and the hotel and the phones is no surprise.
“The quantum, I knew it’d be a large amount but it’s probably even larger than I even picked up because the forensic auditors clearly took a much deeper dive than I could possibly do.
“That shows, firstly, my demand for a forensic audit was validated and, secondly, all the money the RSL spent paying for that forensic audit was worth it.”
The inquiry, in Sydney, continues on Thursday.
– with James Robertson